April in pictures

Spring onions, pak choi, swiss chard, red veined sorrel and wild garlic are in abundance and this month we ate the last of our stored winter squash.

We had the usual excellent crop of wild garlic leaves and flowers, but also saw an interesting variant of the plain green leaved variety. There was a small clump which had a cream coloured stripe running down the centre of the leaves. I've found a few other examples of variegated ramsons by running a Google image search, so it is not unheard of. We didn't pick any of the leaves or flowers but marked the place and are hoping for more next year.

The rhubarb has been going berserk this year and has flowered for the first time. It obviously likes this spot but I think it has overshadowed and crowded out the Babington's leeks that are nearby. We'll find out later the year if we have lost the leeks from this patch, but we do have more dotted around in other areas of the garden.

January 2019 in pictures

January is always a quiet month with very little to do in the garden other than keep everything tidy, minimal weeding and watch out for heavy frosts. We had a few overnight this month and I did wonder if they would affect our rhubarb which had already sprung into action. It seems to have survived the freezing temperatures as have the overwintered broad beans that have been planted amongst the Brussel's sprouts.

We decided, though, to cut the remaining overwintering lettuces that were growing in a pot but I wonder if they would have survived the cold snap had I left them.

Most of the garden work has been indoor - checking seed catalogues and taking an inventory of what we already have. 

May 2018 in pictures

The bluebells were starting to take over the herb patch and were probably responsible for killing off the chives, which had been there for years. They might be pretty but they were in the wrong place so out they came. In any case, they were the Spanish bluebells and not the native English variety.

After a late start, because of the consistently cold weather, the lettuces and peas are catching up in the gro-beds and I've risked planting out the first few tomato seedlings. The overwintering onions are also starting to fill out. 

In the main part of the garden the broad beans (Eleonora) are doing well. This is the first time I've tried to grow them. Underneath the beans I've scattered some mixed salad leaves seeds together with some carrots.

By the end of the month the beans had really taken off, the potatoes in the grow sacks are surging ahead and the overwintered garlic looks as though it will soon be ready for harvesting.

The rhubarb now seems well established and there was enough for me to experiment and make some rhubarb and citrus marmalade.

April 2018 in pictures

After a horrendous March in terms of weather, April brought better conditions but everything is way behind. The over-wintered crops are finally starting to grow again but we are holding off planting out most of the seedlings until we are certain we have decent temperatures and no more snow storms. We decided to chance it, though, with some of the lettuces and that gamble does seem to have paid off.

The strawberries seemed to have been unaffected and have been putting out runners. We had so many of them that we donated the spares to Southcote GrowAllot.

The rhubarb (Timperley Early) has also started in earnest and we have had our first stalks since we planted it about 18 months ago. We've also had our first home grown asparagus.

The damson plum and pear have blossomed and fingers crossed we don't have have too many heavy frosts before the fruit has set.

Pear blossom

March 2018 in pictures

What a start to the month! Freezing temperatures and on March 1st we had heavy snow. This lasted 3-4 days, disappeared and then reapppeared with a vengeance two weeks later. No way were we going to be sowing or planting anything outdoors this month.

In between snow storms the rhubarb was bold enough to poke its head above ground. It was planted about 18 months ago so we are hoping to be able to harvest some stalks from it this year.

Indoors, we were enjoying some pea shoots growing on the window sill but I suspect we may have started them off far too soon. We have no clue as to when it is going to be warm enough to plant them outside.

We finally took the plunge and sowed our tomatoes in modules indoors toward the end of the month, three weeks later than usual but there was no point in starting them off any earlier. The weather forecast is still not good and it will take a while for the ground to warm up. It looks as though that, like last year, everything will be a month late.

We did, though, have some harvest from our perennials: ramsons (wild garlic), Babington's leeks and red veined sorrel. And we were still pulling up the spring onions that probably grew from a packet I had dropped in the autumn last year.